


new growth

by Etheostoma



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Because I Can't Write One without the Other, Cunnilingus, Except it developed plot too, F/M, Fluff, PWP, Post-Canon, Reconciliation, Smut, whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:15:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23340805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etheostoma/pseuds/Etheostoma
Summary: It was Hades who broke first, his dark eyes locking again onto her honeyed ones and pinning her in place.“I missed ya.”The words were the same, always the same, but held such a vastly different meaning this time ‘round.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 88





	new growth

**Author's Note:**

> Well this started as a simple PWP and wound up going a bit deeper because I have a lot of Feelings about these two, but….I did eventually get to the smut! 
> 
> Small aside, I’ve been happily devouring a lot of the fic in this fandom, and have fallen in love with the idea of Hades’ tattoo as a somewhat living entity. This is not my idea in origin, and I don’t claim to take credit for it.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! Comments and kudos are always welcome!

The first thing Persephone noticed when she stepped out of the train car, Hades a silent ghost in her wake, was how _cold_ it was. The air was silent and bitingly brisk, a sharp static pull that tingled as it touched her skin and set a metallic tang to her parted lips. A loud whistle pierced the gloom and pulled her from her thoughts, a singular puff of steam rising in the air as the great train slowly pulled away from the station. Its sluggish departure quickened with each chug of that mighty engine, passing down the gleaming silver track and beyond sight in a mere matter of minutes, leaving husband and wife alone together on the platform.

“It’s cold.” She voiced her thoughts quietly, absently, peering with wonderment into the gloom and quite taken aback by the lack of steam and smog and smoke that typically hung low and heavy in the air.

“Mmm.”

His reply, characteristically cryptic, left her turning on her heel to cast an exasperated look back in his general direction. Their eyes locked then and they froze, staring across the space between them. Those scant feet suddenly widened into a gaping chasm. Six months had seemed longer than ever this year, especially after the boy’s failure, and though the time had been filled with work— _productive_ work—the passage of time between the first bud of spring to that first frost of fall had seemed a veritable eternity this season.

The underground king and his queen shared one long, silent glance, trying to share six months, six years, six _decades_ of conversations in a singular moment. The moat between them filled and narrowed, a drawbridge lowering in rusty, creaking clanks.

 _Try again?_ she implored silently, head quirking to one side and an elegant eyebrow arching in question.

His head inclined. _Always._

Feet shortened to mere inches as they moved without thought, pulled by the same magnetic connection that had drawn them together all those long years ago.

It was Hades who broke first, his dark eyes locking again onto her honeyed ones and pinning her in place.

“I missed ya.”

His voice slid along her in a honeyed caress, that rich, delicious growl trailing down the fine slope of her neck and along the sharp jut of her collarbones, slipping lower to roll over ribs and flanks and calves. She shuddered and leaned almost imperceptibly forward, a thirsting sailor drawn to her siren’s call, nerves humming with ill-restrained anticipation.

The words were the same, always the same, but held _such_ a different meaning this time around.

 _This_ is what she had craved, had desired like nothing else in those long months alone—this singular connection that was entirely theirs, a heady nectar of mutual respect and desire and ( _yes_ ) love.

He rumbled out something else, closing that last bit of distance between them as his hands rose to skim the air along her sides, hesitant even now to touch.

“What?” She shook herself, a wild horse trying to rid itself of an irritating fly, grasping desperately for the trailing ends of conversation that dangled tantalizingly just beyond reach.

Oh, what a tease he could be, and how _welcome_ it was after all this time apart. Amusement gleamed in his coal-black eyes, affection touching his voice as he chuckled and gathered her to him in earnest, clutching the sleek fabric of her dress and drawing her tight against his chest. “I said you are overdressed, lover,” he murmured lowly as his head dipped down and down, and if he were markedly more forward than he had been in decades, well, he was well overdue this affection. The brittle-soft contrast of his mouth and beard passed over soft-smooth skin, brushing along the shell of her ear and then lower, sending waves of electricity pulsing through her already-wired synapses.

She grinned coyly as he lipped at her neck, for two could play at this game. “And you are not, my husband?” she purred, settling her hands on his shoulders and smoothing them down the lapels of his coat, over the exposed buttons of his vest. Dainty fingers danced across his stomach—still that of a far younger man, she was not shy to admit or to admire—and looped over to his arms, trailing down bared forearms to twine through heavily calloused fingers.

He leaned back enough to press a fleeting kiss to the tip of her nose, and she was struck suddenly by the irrational urge to cry at this tendency of his to be so spontaneously teasing, so _tender_ with her even after all this time.

The bob of his Adam’s apple and the sharp inhale of air through his nose were signs that he knew precisely how she felt.

“Talk to me,” she commanded, beginning the oft-remembered if not recently-used dance of dismantling his wardrobe, unrepentantly dismissive of their entirely-too-exposed position on the railway platform. Her hands slid underneath his coat and flicking it off his broad shoulders, sending it cascading down to pool at the ground beneath their feet. Clever fingers flitted to his buttons, making fast work of first vest and then shirt, leaving him bared to the waist.

Persephone sucked in a sharp breath.

His torso, still impressive despite the pull of the years, was pale as always, but the webs of ink winding from left forearm to shoulder to back and around were far different than they had been when she left for the season. Gone was the entirety of that horrid, impenetrable wall, the majority of its bricks now missing or cracked along his arms. Vines had begun to form in their places, snaking through the bare spots to weave through the remaining foundation, blooming outward along veins and muscle to form a snaking, winding path of growth all along his left side.

“Oh!” One slim hand flew to her mouth, lips parted in shock as she stared at the very obvious sign of his shifting interests. “That’s…is that—“

“You. Us. Our love, growing as it should have been all these long years,” he answered, twisting his hands together in an uncharacteristically hesitant gesture and peering at her beneath lowered brows. “The wall is coming down—I thought I should replace it with something that matters.” His lips twisted, wryly. “Although, the ink often takes on a mind of its own; I confess this started before I even realized what was happening.”

She blinked, hard, then jolted forward, all limbs and lips and a flash of teeth as she met him in a searing kiss. Her mouth dragged across his, corner to corner in a sweep of closed lips, before hers parted to sweep her tongue into his mouth and reclaim territory that had once been so familiar. Her touch was molten rock, liquid lava crashing against once-impenetrable walls, a slick slide of skin against skin that stirred long-dormant furnaces deep within his craggy heart. “Talk,” She gasped the order into the soft skin of his neck, mouthing the tender flesh of his throat.

“About what?” he rumbled, eyes blown wide and pupils nearly indistinguishable from the inky depths of his irises. He straightened to his full impressive height and carded his hands through her curls, briefly lamenting the warmth of her lips at his throat.

“ _Anything.”_ She nipped at his pectoral, the closest she could reach with her boots discarded some feet away. Eyes burning, she palmed his sides, the dip of his waist and the small of his back before curving her hands down, crossing the rough texture of his trousers to settle over the swell of his ass. “Need to just hear ya talk, hear your voice.”

He hummed deep in his throat, bucking forward as she squeezed, and scooped her up in his arms to carry her back off the platform, back through the clinging mist and murk and haze until her back thunked into brick and a dark shadow rose above them—the _wall._

The wall and its craggy dark brick still rose high above and around them, but it was _transformed,_ paralleling the shifting web of ink that trailed across her husband’s arm and torso. Bricks had crumbled and fallen, the clearer grey light from beyond its borders peeking through the openings and cutting through the haze of smog and ash and soot that hovered perpetually over the city. Some sections were completely demolished, showing newly-constructed roads leading out, leading _onward,_ snaking through rubble and winding on down the hill to fork outward toward Elysium, the Asphodel Meadows, the Rivers Lethe and Phlegethon and Cocytus.

And, around it all, vines of the deepest emerald twined and twirled, burst from the ground like living snakes to wind and curl up, up, up and around and through and over every bared facet of that cold, lifeless wall. Leaves unfurled, splaying possessively across the worn stone and brick. They glowed with an otherworldly light, an otherworldly _life,_ breathing and pulsing to the strange beat of the Underworld’s heart—a pulse echoed in the thrum of life beneath the palm Persephone laid against her lover’s bared chest.

She tore herself out of her haze to stare up at it, head tipped back as far as the rough contours behind her would allow, reaching her free hand behind her to scrabble at coarse blocks and seize upon that brilliant emerald promise, undeniable once she held it in her grasp and felt a touch of earth magic welling beneath her fingers. “It’s—” Her words froze in her throat with a stifled sob.

Hades moved before either realized it, cradling her face in his palms. “A start, only,” he offered, “but—“

“—beautiful,” she finished, canting her head to meet his eyes firmly. “And we will finish it together.” Kiss-swollen lips turned up in a lazy smile, and she tilted her head up in invitation. “After all, I’m here all winter.”

His eyelids shuttered close, a single heavy kiss of lashes against cheeks, fluttering back into place to pin her in against that wall with his dark gaze. It would take a stronger man by far to deny that offer.

Broad hands slid from her cheeks to the lines of her back as he stepped forward to press her back against the wall, radiating a predatory grace so imposing that it left her breathless and took her back to that springtime grove so many millennia ago.“You are breathtaking, my wife,” he murmured, lips flitting across her eyebrows and cheeks and then down to caress the corner of her mouth. Breath hot on her face, he nipped at her lower lip, soothing it with a quick sweep of his tongue before claiming her completely in a searing kiss.

It was a powerful kiss, a claiming kiss, filled with long-repressed desire and all of the emotions he always clutched so very close to his chest. Mind going blissfully blank but for the pressure of his lips and the sweep of his tongue against hers, Persephone clung to her husband and drifted, caught up in his hold. Never had she imagined, stepping onto the train mere hours before, hands tentatively clasped in his and the promise of a new try held between them, that the day would culminate with her, here, pressed between him and the wall-that-no-longer-was.

She could not complain, certainly, could not do anything more than writhe and twist in his grasp, overcome. It had been far too long since they’d had each other in such a manner, _loved_ each other in such a manner, and she wanted to weep with the delicate care he employed in his otherwise fervent display of passion.

His clever, calloused fingers found the zip of her dress and sent it sliding off of her shoulders to pool in a puddle of silk at their feet and she couldn’t refrain from shuddering at the sudden bite of the cool air against her heated flesh, bare now but for her thin underwear.

“Amazing what shutting down a forge or two will do for the air,” he commented offhandedly, eyes glinting as he took in the gooseflesh that rose across her skin, before lowering his mouth to the curve of her breast and quickly bringing warmth flooding back to her skin.

He was far too calm, too collected, even as he caught pebbled skin between teeth and that delicious tongue flicked out and, _oh—_

Determined not to be entirely distracted, Persephone curled her leg up and around the back of his thigh, smirking when he groaned against her breast. _That_ was more like it. One hand rose to card through his pale hair, nails scratching lightly against his scalp in the way she knew he could not resist, pulling him more tightly against her.

He followed her direction, scraping teeth and stubble over tender skin, applying gentle pressure until she was whimpering, craving more. Lips and teeth teased at one nipple, then the other, tugging and sucking until she was nearly insensate. She could feel his lips curve against her breast as she began to fall apart, that singular devilish smile that was hers and hers alone splitting his craggy face and shedding decades of weariness.

She wanted to kiss it off his face and so she _did_ , hauled him up with the hand in his hair and its partner on his shoulder and devoured him, raking her hands up and down the broad expanse of his back. “Ass,” she muttered, delighting in his answering chuckle as she drew back just enough to gasp it into a shared breath, eyes bright and wild.

Hissing as he pressed her more firmly back against the rough contours of the wall, she gathered her wits just enough to direct a small stream of power to the growth at her back, feeling leaves thicken and grow to offer a sturdy green barrier between her body and the broken bricks.

“Well?” she taunted, and _oh_ to see that playful light back in her eyes.

Hades could feel his heart expand in his chest, the bright jewel Persephone alone always swore was there gradually breaking through its darkened outer husk, gleaming and glittering through the cracks she’d chiseled there oh so long ago.To see her here, splayed out against what his wall had become—the skeletal reminder of everything he had been interwoven with the heady promise of everything they two _could_ be—rendered him nearly speechless, all those deliciously overwhelming and long-buried emotions packed down deep into the core of him clawing their way up, up and out to spill out into the crackling air between them.

He fell to his knees, uncaring of the soil and soot setting into his trousers, and pressed his forehead to her belly, turning to catch the jut of one hipbone with his lips. “Will you forgive this old man, love? Forgive him his follies, his pride?” he asked, humble in a way he only ever had been with her. He blinked up at her, mouth twisted into such a pained grimace that Persephone felt a sharp stab of anguish at his obvious suffering.

_Oh, we two old fools._

She walked her fingers down the curve of his jaw, holding his face steady so that she could continue to map out those dark eyes. “Only if you’ll forgive me mine,” she countered, thumb moving in abstract patterns down over his bared throat.

He swallowed once, pulse jumping beneath her palm, and bowed his head.

Anticipation stirred low in Persephone’s gut, and she smoothed the pad of her thumb against his mouth, dipping it in between parted lips to swipe across the fullness of the lower, feeling his breath hitch damply against her skin.

His head turned, lips now tickling her palm as he kissed it, nuzzling into her hand. Fingers flexed, and he grinned into that honeyed skin, shifting to taste the base of her wrist, the underside of her forearm to the crook of her elbow, and then down to the hip he had neglected, writing love letters across her stomach in languages long forgotten. Her head thudded back against the cushion of greenery she had created as he moved lower, pressing his lips to the sensitive skin at the juncture of her thighs.

Her man always had been good with his mouth.

There was a certain poetry in it all, she thought, weaving her fingers through his hair and panting into the grey sky. He always had enjoyed this act, she even more so. “Some things never change,” she gasped, hips jerking despite herself as he gave a particularly dextrous swipe of his tongue. Her hands found purchase in his silvery hair, twining though the thicker strands at the base of his head and gently tugging him closer.

“That a complaint?” His voice was a teasing rumble against that most sensitive part of her, and she sucked in a sharp breath of cool air in response, biting back a whimper—he’d get too much satisfaction from that, the damn old man.

“Shaddup.”

“As my lady commands,” he murmured lowly, sucking at her clit and causing her to see stars. He applied himself with diligence, gripping her hips tightly with those big hands as he brought her right up to the brink with his mouth alone, calloused fingers digging into her sides in a way that would leave all sorts of delicious bruises should she so desire to let them show (she _would,_ too, she knew, would bear his marks again with pride). “I love you, ya know,” and maybe it wasn’t the right time to say it, with him kneelin’ at her feet his with tongue buried inside her—or, maybe it was _exactly_ the right time.

Humming, he sent a wave of vibrations up through the core of her, latching onto her clit and sliding one, two of those clever, calloused fingers into her and crooking them _just so,_ and—

She fell apart around him, vision whiting out as she clenched and fluttered around him, a short, sharp cry slipping through parted lips to echo in the gloom around them. Legs shaky, she sank to her knees, his arms catching her as she slid, boneless, to the ground and brought herself level with him.

“Love you too, ‘Seph,” he rumbled, hand smoothing away the sweaty curls plastered to her forehead, and gods _damn_ it but he was a smug bastard sometimes, all teeth-touched smile and crinkle of crows feet at the corners of his eyes as he smirked. He meant it though, she could tell that quite easily, meant it and meant it ten, twenty, ten _thousand_ times over.

Still, that insufferable smirk remained, playing at his lips even as he carded gentle fingers through her hair and held her trembling form. Her lips parted, rebuke at the tip of her tongue—then she shook it away like an irritating fly and seized his mouth between those lips instead, putting them to _much_ better use as she slotted them against his and thrust her tongue into his mouth, delighting of the taste of herself on him. “Ya mean it?” she finally asked, when she had to pull away because neither of them could breathe and her lips were red and plush and raw, and his had a speck of golden blood from where she had nipped and nibbled and soothed.

Broad palms cradled her face, tilting her face up to his, those ancient eyes reading her like a favorite novel, gleaning every little lingering scrap of insecurity she just couldn’t quite shake, even after all their steps forward.

“Always,” he breathed, pressing their foreheads together. “From the beginning, and so on to the end. You’re _mine,_ lover, and I’m yours, as long as you’ll have me.”

Traitorous heart threatening to pound its way from her breast, Persephone drew one of his hands down to her chest, palm down over her heart where it pulsed. “That’s yours,” she told him, tone leaving no room for argument. “Has been from the start, will be in the end, too, I reckon. You’re stuck with me, husband.”

“What a fate,” he lamented, chuckling even as his glittering eyes told her just how much the words _truly_ meant. He shifted, turned his mouth to the slope of her neck, sucking a mark into existence and laying claim to territory he had long since memorized yet delighted in re-discovering all the same.

A sudden sharp twinge in her knees reminded Persephone that she was no longer young, and she pulled back with a slight grimace. “Hades,” she said, caching his chin in her fist and holding him steady before he could lure her too far back into passion's grasp, “take me to bed.”

He blinked, slow and calculating—never hurried, never rash, her man, unless one were to argue that the entire run of their _relationship_ were rash—and rose in a single, fluid movement, only wincing slightly as his own knees cracked with the motion. “The evening is still young yet,” he countered in a low drawl, nevertheless stooping to scoop her into his arms, bare as the day she was born.

She dropped one hand to cup him through his tented trousers, squeezing lightly and relishing the way his pupils dilated and his breath grew tight in his chest. “Oh, I hardly think that matters,” she replied flippantly, feeling millennia lighter in his arms, “by the time I’m done with you it will be a _much_ more acceptable time to retire.”

Teeth bared, he collected her in a bruising kiss, hands squeezing into her sides as he held her pressed to his chest. “’s that so?” he intoned, cocking an eyebrow. “Might be a man’ll do just about anything for his wife when she starts talkin’ like that.”

Grinning broadly, all teeth and tension and tightly-wound desire, Persephone curled herself into his embrace and plastered as much skin against his bare chest as the angle would allow. “Well then, husband mine,” she purred, smoothing a hand across his brow and scratching a kiss across his jaw, voice honeyed and laced with liquid desire, “take me to bed.”

And who was he but to obey? 


End file.
